[gameprogrammer] Re: question about protection of ideas (and protection of source code)
- From: Alan Wolfe <alan.wolfe@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: gameprogrammer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 23 Oct 2011 16:35:12 -0700
Hey Christoph,
Yeah I'm being cautious not to claim too much until it's done and working
all the way.
If it helps put it into perspective, I'm a professional game programmer w/ a
little over a decade of experience. I just wanted to make sure i had my
ducks in a row on this side of things in case it works out. It's going
pretty darn well so far!
Thanks for the info!
On Sun, Oct 23, 2011 at 4:23 PM, Christoph Harder <shadowomf@xxxxxxxx>wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I would also recommend to write a paper and a sample application and put it
> in your CV/on your website.
>
> Don't take it the wrong way, but making any money with this is hard,
> because:
> -realtime raytracing is possible for quite some time (take a look at heaven
> seven a 64k by exceed, release 2000)
> -there are many free algorithms that improve the performance of raytracing
> -if your technique isn't working with complex scenes (more than a few
> primitives) it can only be used to test bounding boxes. Try comparing a
> scene with many objects at a high resolution to 3ds/maya/blender, do use
> similar features (don't activate GI in 3ds if your raytracer doesn't support
> it).
> -your timings are impossible to interpret, is your baseline an optimized or
> a naive raytracer?
> -is it also scalable at more complex scenes and higher resolutions? now it
> seems to be scaling almost linear, but what happens if the hole scene does
> not fit in the cache?
>
> For the actual legal stuff you should really go and see a lawyer.
> However as mentioned in a post before, in many countries you do have the
> copyright for your own work without registering it.
> For example in germany I can put a (c) 2011 Christoph Harder at the top of
> my source code. Of course it doesn't automatically mean the algorithm is
> protected.
>
> Wish you good luck and happy raytracing.
> -Christoph
>
>
> On 24.10.2011 00:57, Peter Mikelsons wrote:
>
>> IANAL but that sounds like a patent. OTOH it's probably been done before
>> and making a patent as a little guy is Very Hard. Probably your best hope is
>> to publish a nice paper for your CV.
>>
>> -- Peter Mikelsons
>> On Oct 23, 2011 10:57 AM, Alan Wolfe<alan.wolfe@xxxxxxxxx&**gt; wrote:
>>
>> Hey there guys,
>>
>> I recently had some ideas for helping achieve real time raytracing that
>> I'm starting to implement in HTML5 of all things. I'm using javascript
>> to show more dramatically how it improves things, and also make it more
>> accessible / cross platform than a stand alone exe.
>>
>>
>>
>> There are some caveats to what you can and can't do with it (ie certain
>> actions cause massive slowdown, while others are virtually free) but so far
>> i'm getting pretty darn good results!
>>
>> To give you an idea, at 300x300 in a simple scene of 2 spheres, a plane,
>> and 2 point lights, with shadows, reflections (up to 5 bounces) and phong
>> shading, without my techniques, I get:
>>
>> IE: about 0.75 fps (1333ms)
>>
>> Firefox: about 1.5 fps (667ms)
>> Chrome: about 0.5fps (2000ms)
>>
>> With my techniques in place:
>> IE: about 8 fps (125ms)
>> Firefox: about 7.5fps (133ms)
>> Chrome: about 38fps (26ms) - yes really!
>>
>>
>> More complex scenes don't invalidate my techniques, they still works
>> great. It definitely gets slower with higher resolutions but not
>> unreasonably so, but for instance, in chrome at 800x600 i still get about
>> 6.5fps on my 3 year old laptop (and i haven't fully implemented everything
>> yet). I shudder to think what it could do in a native language! (i
>> intend to port it when finished with the html5 implementation)
>>
>>
>> Anyhow, what does one do with such ideas? I don't think anyone else
>> has done what I'm doing before but i could be wrong (i couldnt find anything
>> via google). Also, my current employer didn't have me sign anything
>> that says they own all things i create outside the office (unlike previous
>> employers!)
>>
>>
>>
>> It being javascript, anyone who sees it has access to the code which
>> presents a problem. Should i put some kind of copyright notice in
>> the
>> source or something?
>>
>> I read up a little on patents and it seemed like they were really
>> expensive for legal fees etc (20k in USA at least). Also, one thing i
>> would hate is to have come up with a nifty technique, only to have a large
>> company buy it from me and charge others to use it / prevent others from
>> using it - IE like the "carmack's reverse" drama.
>>
>>
>> At the same time, it would be nice to have some credit somehow.
>> Something to put on my resume (published paper or something?) and ya know...
>> if there is any money to be made on it without being evil, that would be
>> nice haha.
>>
>>
>>
>> So, does anyone have any idea what to do in this sort of situation?
>>
>> Thanks for any insight!
>>
>>
>>
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